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serial killer identified
If anyone can tell me the difference between Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, and Ted Bundy, I'd be really glad to hear it.
A few years back, it was shown that Cameron Todd Willingham, stupid enough to have been born in Texas, had been convicted of a crime that didn't exist: he'd been railroaded to a death sentence by forensics testimony indicating the fire that had killed his kids was arson. Later forensics evidence showed the stuff presented in court had been a mixture of superstition and pseudoscience (and I'm being charitable): there was no reason to believe the fire had been anything other than an accident caused by bad wiring.
Worried his psychopathic pig-ignorant electorate might punish him for being "soft on crime" should he pardon an innocent man, Perry insisted the killing of Willingham go ahead. When a State of Texas legal committee tried to stop this murder, Perry rejigged its membership to fill it with his cronies.
Killing for gain? That's murder, isn't it?
And now he's played a similar jolly little trick on Humberto Leal Garcia, a Mexican convicted on likewise dodgy (quite possibly concocted) forensics; further, Garcia's conviction was invalid under international law, since as a Mexican citizen he should have had access to his consulate, access effectively denied by the State of Texas's failure to inform any of the relevant parties. Even President Obama, who doesn't mind bombing the shit out of innocent Afghan civilians, was worried enough about the welter of human-rights cases building up in the International Court against Democracy's Champion to try to intervene on Garcia's behalf; no reaction from Perry, keen to court the votes of the most vicious, ignorant and racist people in Texas.
I have no idea how many other innocent people Perry has killed to advance his political career. A writer like Rodney Balko might know. Go google.
There's a word for people who put personal gain ahead of the lives of other human beings. Perry's one of them. There's also a term for people who are so rejective of basic science that they'd rather pursue the dictates of their reality-divorced ideology than accept basic, easily comprehensible facts placed in front of them; Perry's one of those, too.
The history books are, obviously, going to list the guy as a serial killer; isn't it about time we all of us started calling him out on this before he kills another innocent?
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Actually, our whole penal system needs to be radically restructured from the ground up. On top of the many questionable executions, the whole thing is a huge, huge shame. With 5% of the world's population, we've got 1/4 of its prisoners. We have the highest percentage of minorities imprisoned of any nation in the world, I believe. We have tens of thousands of innocent people imprisoned because they plea bargained rather than facing ridiculous mandatory minimum sentencing after being loaded with charges and given inadequate, if any, legal representation. Recidivism rates are extremely high; it seems our prison system does more to create criminals than to reform them, and it certainly does nothing to help them rejoin mainstream society once they've served their time. The Supreme Court has time and again quashed anything that demonstrates the unjustness of it all and therefore might necessitate reform rather than more of the same -- the whole thing is so out of control that even our highest court can't even allow themselves to admit the injustice of it for fear of actually having to do something about it, because they know that any steps to clean up this terrible mess would have to be large and radical. And politicians feel they have no choice but to shriek "hard on crime" and join the madness. It's insane and awful all around.
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Actually, our whole penal system needs to be radically restructured from the ground up.
Nathan, I couldn't agree more with every word you say . . . except that, dammit, you've put it all better than I ever possibly could.
Right now, the US struts around the world stage proclaiming itself as a champion of freedom. I'm in touch with people from a lot of other countries (artists, authors, etc.; it's my job) and, believe me, they're perfectly well aware of the relative size of the US prison population and the racist disparities of conviction levels; until the kind of rebuilding you mention is started, the US will be the subject of international derision . . . and worse.
What amazes me is how tolerant people overseas are of Americans, as opposed to US governments. The first time we went to the UK after Bush's illegal and bloody invasion of Iraq, I was worried that Pam's US accent might draw thugs; quite the contrary, we had people come up to us in the street sympathizing that we had to live under the rule of the Il Buce junta. It was an amazing lesson in humanity for both of us.
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Is the icon a Tibetan mastiff?
Oo, you'll have offended Nathan now.
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